Hunted
by BBirdy
Summary: Danny isn't feeling well and yet ghosts are still ghosts, and life (or un-life) won't wait for anyone. K plus for illness


Danny walked into Amity Park high school with a headache and stuffy nose. By lunch his headache had grown in pain, and his whole face felt like it was on fire.

"Maybe you should head home," Sam said worriedly. "Tucker and I can take care of any ghost attacks."

"It's not the attacks that I'm worried about," Danny sniffed, laying his throbbing head on the table. "Jazz spent almost three hours studying with me last night. If I leave school before last period she'll kill me."

Tucker glanced at Sam worriedly.

"Dude, you can always retake the test."

"Which would require after school hours," Danny looked back up at them, "and I have to catch ghosts."

"We're just worried about you," Sam watched him. "You obviously feel awful, you need rest."

The very idea of sleep made Danny ache to his bones. Resolutely he shook his head. "I'll get some sleep after school."

"You know she'd understand if—" Tucker was cut off by a puff of frozen air from Danny's mouth.

"You've got to be kidding me," he stood shakily, glancing around to make sure no one was looking at their far table and turned invisible.

"Danny!" Sam called after him. But he was long gone.

He ran out into the hall, looking around when a shadow passed the window. The hallway was abandoned and he let the cold circles of energy begin, stretching from his stomach. It filled him with a freezing familiarity, his aches vanishing for the moment. The dark strands of hair in his face turned white before his eyes which flashed with power before turning electric green. White gloves incased his hands like they were personally made for him. Crouching down he tried to access his intangibility. It took longer than normal before he jumped into the air, gravity releasing its hold he followed after the shadow on the window.

Once outside the brick stucco building he looked around. The sight was almost sickening. Ectoplasmic goo was splattered across the roof, twitching in places before falling still, the bright sun making it peel at the edges.

"Oh gross!" he cried, wheeling back. After a second he moved forward and landed on the roof. The ectoplasm had been destroyed. Not just splattered, but the imprint on the ectoplasm had been annihilated.

Who would do this? Dropping to his knees he felt a wave of sorrow. Danny himself only put the other ghosts back in their dimension. Sure he had grudges with a few of them, but he couldn't imagine ending them.

Closing his eyes, he offered a silent moment of mourning for the spirit that would no longer return.

"Who would do this?" he asked aloud.

The whirring of a charging gun answered his question.

"I would," a girl's voice answered him. Turning around he had to actually push back tears. They were the same species… mostly.

"Afternoon," he greeted, looking down at the silver gun pointed at his chest.

The figure in front of him was clad in metallic black and red, her face behind red tinted glass. "Don't move!" Valarie Gray growled her finger on the trigger.

"You did this?" Danny asked.

For a second she was taken aback by the sorrow in his voice. When she recovered herself she grinned, leaning forward. "Yes I did. That piece of scum will never haunt this earth again."

"What did it look like?" he remained calm, unmoving despite the whirring gun merely inches from his chest.

"I don't know, green, red eyes, bigger than me." Her eyes narrowed. "What do you care? According to you, you hunt ghosts too."

"But I don't kill them," his voice turned icy.

"They're already dead, that's why their ghosts!" Valerie was very close to pulling the trigger; something in her was stopping her.

She had planned to kill him without a seconds thought, blow him into oblivion like the ghost before him. But there was something so human about him at the range. His face had a pale completion and large electric green eyes. If you looked past the white hair and the awful hazmat suit he was actually kind of cute.

What was she thinking? He was a ghost. He'd ruined her life. He deserved to be blasted from existence.

But did he? He claimed he hunted ghosts and she'd never actually seen him hurt anyone, or haunt anyone. In fact, he only showed up when there were other ghosts around. Could he possibly be telling the truth?

Danny saw the hesitation in her eyes and used that time to steady himself, push down his sorrow.

"What are you going to do with me?" he wasn't waiting for her to make up her mind. "Because this is usually where you tell me I'm 'going down.'"

His condescending tone and surprisingly sad eyes decided her. He was trying to mess with her head but she wouldn't let him.

"No," she slapped a pair of handcuffs on him, glowing with an evil dark pink. "I'm taking you prisoner."

"What?" Danny's eyes widened.

"You heard me. And I have something specific in mind."

* * *

Valerie dropped on the roof the Fenton's house, the handcuffed Danny strapped tight to her hoverboard. As the mechanical board fused back into her feet Danny hit the roof with a heavy thud. The freezing air around them had cleared his head a little but as their speed decreased and they stopped his headache returned.

"What are we doing here?" his voice was hoarse with dehydration.

"I want you to take me into the Fenton portal."

"What?"

"Show me the ghost zone. I hunt ghosts. If I can exterminate them at their roots I'll be the best hunter in the world," her expression was so murderous it was only with the last of his willpower he summoned the effort to argue.

"You want to kill ghosts in their own homes?"

"That is what I just said."

"But…" Danny's heart hurt. First, she'd ruined the only remains of what had been an actual human being but now she wanted to cut them down at their source. "That's murder," he tried to explain. "They were people once and you want to end the only things that ever tied them to humanity?"

Valarie had a clean conscious. "They aren't human beings anymore. They're scum and they deserve to be wiped out."

"Not all ghosts are evil!" Danny felt like a broken record. The amount of times he'd said this to her couldn't even be counted anymore.

"Says the ghost." Valerie pointed the gun at his head. "Do it now!"

"Never," Danny glared back at her. "I will never submit them to that."

"You fight ghosts," she tried again. "Won't this stop all that? This will stop all your fights."

"I won't do it," he crossed his arms stubbornly.

She pushed him toward the portal, his back slamming into the metal doors. "You will open that door or I will shoot you in the head and I'll at least be free of you."

That made him pause if only for a second. Was his life worth the entire ghost population? She did have a point. But no, if the ghost zone was destroyed with no inhabitants, earth would break to. They needed both sides of the coin to be stable. Besides that there were too many ghosts. She would end up getting hurt or killed herself in her never ending quest.

Danny took a breath to re affirm his opinion when a small head stuck out of the door. It was a tiny head, bright green and grinned, with a lolling pink tongue.

"Cujo?" Danny almost groaned. If there was ever a time he least wanted to see his tiny puppy.

"You!" The red huntress pointed her gun toward the dog, pulling the trigger.

"No!" Danny pulled her away and the shot went wild, hitting the lights and sending sparks everywhere.

Valerie turned on him, glaring as the dog jumped out of sight. "I was going to get rid of him."

"I don't want him to go," Danny tried to explain.

"Of course not," her eyes narrowed. "He's your dog."

"He is not my dog," Danny groaned.

At the return of Danny's vice the puppy looked out, biting the sleeve of the uniform, he became intangible with the puppy. And Valarie, to whom he was still holding onto, was sucked into the ghost zone.

Both teens yelled aloud with the shock of it, pulled into the ghost zone.

**Yet another of the many stories I've been finding fro docs long abandoned. Thanks for reading!**


End file.
